The Hero Chronicles: Secrets by Tim Mettey

Title: The Hero Chronicles: Secrets
Author: Tim Mettey
Publisher: Tim Mettey
Rating: WARTY!

This novel I've had in my reader for a while, putting it off for items more urgent, but it’s time to get this read. Another reason for putting it off is that this novel violates several of my conditions for reading a novel (most of which materialized after I'd added this one to my list!). First of all the title incorporates not only the word "chronicles", but also the word "hero", both of which I've sworn-off in novel titles (along with 'cycle' and 'saga'!). Secondly it’s first person PoV, which is a big no-no for me since it’s all "Me!" all the time: "Hey lookit me!" "Hey forget that, pay attention to what I'M doing!" and "No one is more important than Meeeee!"

It’s so self-indulgent and irritating, and it’s a rarity in my experience to find such a novel that's written well enough to be worth expending my time on - not when there are so many other novels and life is short! I'd much rather read something easy on the mind than something which requires fortitude and gritted teeth just to scan the text!

This novel also has sound effects incorporated into the text. Even for a middle to upper grade novel it’s a no-no. The school bell doesn’t ring, it goes "DING!DING!DING!DING!" without any spaces in between. How annoying! The the main character is equally annoying. When the bell rings for recess, he doesn’t take his turn, but hurries to the front of the line. And this is just on the second page of this thing. The school apparently experiences an earthquake, and suddenly it’s five years later and we’re in chapter two. Kudos to the author for actually putting the prologue into the body of the novel. It’s the only way you'll get me to read a prologue! I'm guessing some super villain or other comes out of the earthquake, but I haven’t read that far, so it’s only a guess.

Nick the hero is now living with his aunt Cora. Cora's only defining qualities are that she's slim and beautiful, because who wants a smart woman who might be overweight? Let’s not ever tell young children that smarts are more important than looks. And while we’re at it, who wants a woman with integrity and good humor? No one. Don’t ever tell young kids that. The hell with integrity, industry and accomplishments! Let’s not have kids growing up thinking those things are of value. Nope! Keep it superficial!

This author evidently thinks that all young kids need to know is that women should be slim and beautiful - like a magazine model - because no other woman is worth anything, let's face it. That's what all-too-many writers want us to believe, sadly enough, and that's evidently what this writer apparently wants young kids to grow-up learning. Personally, I don’t buy it, but that's the way it is. Maybe I should start keeping a tally, as I read, of how many strikes this novel garners for itself? Naw! I never read that far.

Cora and nephew are moving to a new home. I like the way Cora specifies that they'll be leaving at 5am sharp in the morning, so that he doesn’t get any ideas that they'll be moving out at 5am sharp in the afternoon…. It’s not a spoiler to reveal that he's a superhero and this could well be why they're moving so frequently. The how and why of this isn't immediately explained, but he at least has super speed, so here comes the next trip-up.

Alex and Nick decorate an older guy's car with bologna, because that's unquestionably the best way to have a really fun night, and when the older guy starts looking for the culprits, Alex proves that he can run faster than a Mustang - which in the end crashes injuring the guys. How christian is that?! He runs right into the kid he's rescuing - at speed - and takes him along so they won't be caught, but the writer is in dire need of a lesson in physics and biology, because he simply doesn’t get it (that's what too much religion will do for you!). Don’t worry, the writers in The Flash TV show don't get it either.

It doesn't matter how much of a super hero you are, the laws of physics still apply, and ordinary people still have the same biology. If you run at sixty miles an hour and pick-up a by-stander in order to rescue them, then their body is going to go from zero to sixty instantly, and you're going to break their neck or give them some serious whiplash and compression injuries at least. That's not much of a rescue.

This novel started out middle grade and moved to young adult, but the tone never changed from middle-grade. Worse than this, instead of telling us a story about the super hero powers, we got a story of the main character playing football - in tedious detail. What happened to the super hero? I guess football is more important. This story felt far more like author wish-fulfillment than ever it did a real story, and I cannot in good faith recommend it.

From Chaos Born by Michael R Hicks

Title: From Chaos Born
Author: Michael R Hicks
Publisher: Imperial Guard Publishing (no website found)
Rating: WARTY!

This novel has drunk so deeply from the fountain of fantasy that it’s almost a parody. Every single place name has an apostrophe in it which serves no evident purpose. Every character name has a hyphen. The opening pages are as dense an info-dump as you will find anywhere. Every time we’re given a name for something that is neither a character nor a place, we're immediately given a translation afterwards. Why, then, give us the original name? Why not simply say it’s 'X' instead of telling us it’s 'Y" which means 'X' in English? And why say 'Cycles' instead of years? What’s the point other than pure pretension?

If we’re getting this for objects, then why not for people and places? Every word means something, so why not translate everything? Even as it was, it was tedious to have to read this, so perhaps this was a blessing. The reading process wasn't helped by the font which looked like it was typewritten and was densely packed on the page, with virtually no margin.

I know I always argue that for the sake of trees, it’s incumbent upon us to make best use of the paper for the sake of the print edition, but believe it or not, there are limits even to my fanaticism! In addition to that, every apostrophe 's', such as in "T'ier-Kunai's" had a space after the apostrophes, so it looked like "T' ier-Kunai' s". I don’t know why this was (maybe someone had done a search and replace because they wanted the apostrophe followed by a space for the place names?), but it sure didn’t make for a comfortable read.

Chapter one begins on page eleven, and by page eighteen I was already worn out by this story, having no real interest in reading another two hundred pages of info-dump. I felt like one of the steeds these characters were riding! The main character, Kunan-Lohr, has literally ridden several animals to death on his urgent charge back from the battle-front to the city, yet he hypocritically orders the stable hands to "Tend them well!" when he finally arrives!

I gave this up on page 32 because I simply could not stand to read it. Your mileage may differ.

The Salt Roads by Nalo Hopkinson

Title: The Salt Roads
Author: Nalo Hopkinson
Publisher: Open Road Media
Rating: WARTY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!

This novel made no sense at all to me. I was interested in reading it because it was about slavery in the Caribbean (so I thought), but the real story of that horror was demeaned by the author's amateur attempts at trying to imbue her novel with "kewl", and by her bringing "magic" into it.

I know that superstition was (and is) a part of primitive people's lives, and that Victorians believed in spirits, but having characters conjure up a vision from a chamber pot full of urine and menstrual fluid seemed to me to be not only gross, but to cheapen the story being told about the conditions under which slaves were forced to live, and turning the whole thing into a gaudy circus. And that bit wasn't even in the Caribbean, it was in Paris!

I have no idea what that had to do with anything because I quit reading this novel at this point. I couldn't continue because I couldn’t stop myself from laughing at how sorry it truly was. Somehow I'm thinking that this isn't the effect you want to have on your reader when writing about a grotesque topic like slavery.

The misguided cuteness really swung into play between pages 38 and 50, and it was so ridiculous as to be a parody. After a chapter about a stillborn baby and its burial, we immediately get a page (39) containing only the world BREAK/ in bold block caps, followed by page which contains only two paragraphs describing some obscure, anonymous event which has played no part in the story so far, the next page contains only BEAT!, the next another three obscure paragraphs, the page bears only ONE-, the next only one paragraph, again obscure and anonymous, disconnected from the main story, the next has three dots, a down arrow, and the word DROP, the next more anonymous paragraphs, the next BLUES, and finally we get to another unnumbered chapter on page 49. I can't tell you what a thrill that was to read. I can't tell you because I was mourning, by that time, not for the dead child, but for tragically wasted trees.

If I’d wanted to read a humorous novel about slavery, which I don’t, I could no doubt have found one. If I’d wanted to read a parody, I could have written one. I've done it before! I actually wanted neither of these. I wanted an intelligent and serious story about slavery, not amateur experimental fiction designed with no other purpose, it seemed to me, than to gross out the reader with this day-late and dollar-short effort to be avant garde and ultra hip. I cannot recommend this novel based on what I read, and I certainly have no interest in reading more of this nor anything else by this author for that matter.

Charmed Deception by Eilis O'Neal

Title: Charmed Deception
Author: Eilis O'Neal
Publisher: Egmont
Rating: WARTY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!

I started this one thinking I wouldn't be able to finish it - it seemed far too larded with trope and cliché to be appealing to a reader like me, but as I read on and despite the presence of rather too much cliché for my taste, I found myself initially warming to the story. Sadly, it was not to last. I was able to stomach only about half of this novel, and I'll tell you why.

The main character is young woman by the highly unlikely name of Sable Wildcross who lives a very pampered existence and sees nothing amiss with it. Her only problem is that in her world (actually in her country), only men are allowed to practice magic. Women used to be killed if they developed the 'resonance' and were caught employing it. As it is, now they're "only" imprisoned for life, but not many women seem to have this resonance - which is what they would feel were they men, and were in close proximity to their favored 'element'.

Yes, this is another novel where compounds and substances are mislabeled 'elements', and of course they're the standard clichéd four: earth, wind, fire, and water, with an added bonus of animals! How animals class as elements is unexplained - or at least it was as far as I read. There is one more resonance, however, and it's no spoiler that this is the one which Sable has. It wouldn't be a YA novel were it otherwise! Her resonance is that she can 'siphon-off' the magic of others and use it for whatever - in other words, if she siphons fire magic, she doesn't have to use it to control fire, she can instead control water with it.

Sable first learns she's special from Never - a girl who appears to her one night in her library and looks like a ghost, but who turns out to be a remote presence projected by a woman of Sable's age who is very much the same as Sable - having magic as her resonance. Sable first contacts her when she accidentally breaks her heart charm - a necklace she's worn for years, which supposedly gives her magic protection for her weak heart.

Given that this necklace was given to her by a magician from one of the lands where magic is freely practiced by both genders, it's no surprise to anyone but Sable that the guy who gave it to her knew of her condition, and supplied her with the necklace purely to protect her and keep her power hidden.

Every chapter ends in a bit of a cliff-hanger here, which is kind of fun, although some of them fall a bit flat. Despite the fact that it's a lengthy book (almost 450 pages) it's a very fast read. Sable has a best friend, Laurel, who doesn't know about her resonance, a nice guy named Mason who is her life-long friend - the resident good guy, and Lord Lockton, the resident bad guy, forming a nice trope triangle.

My immediate feeling - having read this far (~25%) - was that maybe Lockton was a good guy in disguise, and that the ghostly Never was actually a trap set up by the wizards who were supposedly holding her prisoner for a scheme of their own. I suspected that it’s Sable they want, and Never is a fiction used as bait. I'm not going to tell you if I was right about that, only that I'm usually wrong in my wild guesses - but not always!

Lockton didn't assume quite the role of 'bad boy' I'd initially thought. The 'bad boy', it turns out, is Reason Midnight. Yes, the names are profoundly stupid. Sable's dad's first name is "Venerable"! I am not making this up - the author is! The king's name is Dauntless, and no doubt there's a Prince Amity, a Princess Candor, and a Queen Abnegation.... Reason, as it happens, is the third leg of the inevitable YA trope love triangle

We're told that there's a level of excitement in the house at Reason's arrival, but this makes no sense. The character is merely the son of one of the guests at the house, and he's not considered a paragon of anything. He's juvenile, and he has neither accomplishments nor anything to recommend him, so there's no reason at all for anyone to be excited that he's coming.

The fact that the author, and through her, the main character, who is laughably babbling on about him in first person PoV, makes such a huge deal out of his visit tells me the character, if not the author, is way overdoing this visit, and therefore is a completely unreliable narrator, which in turn calls into question everything we've read so far. This is an example of rather short-sighted writing and poor editing.

The author has evidently forgotten that all of this isn't taking place in the Midnight household, but at the Wildcross home! There's no reason at all why that family should celebrate Reason's arrival as though someone of nobility or royalty is coming. If it were in the Midnight household, it would be rather different - although still excessive given how Lady Crescent speaks about him, but to have this non-event supposedly taking control of Sable's home and everyone in it is patently ridiculous and purest bullshit. The novel, which I'd been largely enjoying up to this point, took a serious hit because of this and made me wonder if this was the start of a lamentable downhill slide.

And downward slide it did. It was inevitable, when Sable decided to take a walk by herself rather than take a mid-day nap with everyone else, that she would go out into the grounds to walk, that she would go to the wildest most untamed part of the grounds, that she would run into Reason there, that Reason would be the trope YA male - with a woman's eyes (startlingly blue in this case, but with the clichéd super-thick lashes), a woman's full red lips, and that he would be well-dressed, and muscular.

I'm surprised his name wasn't Androgyne Midnight instead of 'Reason', because there wasn't any reason for him to be the way he was except that this is YA fiction and the author is cynically taking it the road most trampled by the herding instincts of desperate YA writers. I managed to refrain from vomiting only with extreme fortitude, but Sable's heart was less restrained: it began thudding at sad things like the proximity of Reason's magnificent knee. Pathetic.

Next out comes some appalling grammar: "You've air resonance aren't you?" she asks. What does that mean exactly? It means that author screwed up. It should be "You have air resonance, haven't you?" or "You're air resonant, aren't you?", but not a mix of both! Right after they've introduced themselves, part one ends. What this tells me is that this novel isn't about Sable at all, but about a magical super-hero, the manly man Reason Midnight. What a thorough and complete betrayal of the main character - and once again by a female author, too! Now, instead of being a strong woman, a rebel, and someone worth reading about, Sable is nothing more than an irritatingly swooning appendage of a male character, and I've lost all interest in this novel.

Reason turned out to be about as shallow as they come. These people have magic at their disposal, and yet Reason's only interests, in his own words, are: music, art, riding, picnics, the time to visit as many shops and tailors as he wishes, travel, dances, and young ladies. Not a single word about improving the quality of life for anyone. What a complete and total jerk.

Right after that we got the inevitable clichéd horse race between Sable and Reason which took place "scandalously" as the family went riding the next day. Yet no matter what Sable does, no matter how indiscreet, no matter how inappropriate, no matter how shameful in such a society, she's never censured, and she pays no penalty for her behavior no matter what it is! Meanwhile, Reason is snooping around Sable's home at night, but she doesn't have the guts to challenge him and when finally, accidentally, they encounter each other, Reason, and not Sable, takes charge and demands she tell him everything before he utters a word to her. Naturally this wilting violet acquiesces.

This was roughly half-way though this story, and by this time I'd had quite enough nonsense for one novel. I don't normally say anything about the cover of the books I review because this blog is about writing, not about cynically garnering sales, and the author typically has nothing to do with the cover unless they're smart enough to self publish, but in this case the cover was - accidentally, I'm sure - spot on. The novel and the cover are in sync in that they both advise us to pay no attention to this girl's mind - it's not important at all. Pay attention instead, we're obviously being told, only to her body because that's clearly all any woman has to offer.

There had been the makings of a great story here, but it was amateurishly, if not downright foolishly, frittered away on trashy YA clichés. I can't in all decency and honesty recommend this novel.

Romantic Outlaws by Charlotte Gordon

Title: Romantic Outlaws
Author: Charlotte Gordon
Publisher: Random House
Rating: WORTHY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!

This is a true story (if a bit overly dramatized here and there!) of two Marys: mother and daughter, the elder of whom, Mary Wollstonecraft, pretty much single-handedly founded feminism, and the younger of whom, best known as Mary Shelley, became famous for her novel Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, written when she was eighteen (and which was almost universally panned upon its initial publication).

The title of this book is oddly ironic since there's nothing either romantic or outlaw-ish about either of these two women unless you think of outlaw as the opposite of in-law and consider Mary the younger's circumstances once she eloped with Percy Shelley, the pretentious poet. Outlandish Scofflaws might have been a better title!

What this history is, above and beyond all else, is a shocking account of abuse, cruelty, and injustice heaped upon women by the very men they loved and counted on: Imlay, Godwin, Shelley, and Byron. Mary Wollstonecraft, before she ever met Mary Shelley's father, was doing a great job of being the very thing she stood for - a strong and independent woman, until she met a complete jerk by the name of George Imlay, whom she allowed to take advantage of her before he then abandoned her for someone younger.

She fell apart at this point, betraying her feminist principles, going into a funk, and twice trying to commit suicide, selfishly sparing not a thought for her young daughter, Imlay's daughter and Mary Shelley's sister-in-law, Fanny, who herself committed suicide later in her own life. This is the same woman who competed with men on equal terms as a writer, who lived in and lived through the French revolution, becoming perhaps the world's first foreign correspondent, working for a news and social commentary magazine.

In turn, Mary Shelley, who never knew her mother, spent her whole life missing her, and took off with Percy Shelley in what was superficially a romantic elopement, but which proved to be nothing for than delusional juvenile folly which turned into a dire marriage sabotaged by Shelley's selfish and self-absorbed inability to love, and exacerbated by Mary's crushing loss of her first two children. Mary was partly to blame for the death of her second child, William, since she knew that Rome was subject to the fever (malaria) in the summer but selfishly refused to move away from the city. She never forgave herself for that poor decision.

The contrast between these two women's lives is as stark as the similarities. Mary Wollstonecraft had to fight for everything she admirably gained only to lose it willingly as she allowed herself to become a slave to her ironic dependency upon Gilbert Imlay. Mary Shelley was spoiled rotten except for her perennial longing for her father's affection, which never came. She got everything she wanted, although it came with the pain of being in dire financial straits and with social ostracism for her running away with a married noble man who turned out to be about as ignoble as they come.

Percy Shelley seduced his wife-to-be, Harriet, blinded by some asinine "romantic" notion that he was saving her - a notion which came to him again when he met Mary Godwin, and yet again when he met an Italian noble woman while still married to Mary. As soon as Harriet, and then Mary became pregnant, Shelley pretty much lost interest in them since they were no longer romantic, and he evidently had no idea how to be anything other than a distant lover. He preferred to go off by himself writing grandiose, but ultimately shallow poetry than to sit with his bereaved and grieving wife and hold her hand. Mary's cold withdrawal after the death of William didn’t help. No romance there.

Mary and Percy's relationship was lived in the pale shadow of Mary's other half sister, Claire, who traveled with them everywhere, adding to the scandal under which they lived, making Mary look (and in some ways feel) like one of two female concubines to the poet. This pressure came to a head more than once in fights between Mary and Claire.

Lord Byron was no better. He joined them on their extended vacation, seducing Claire and then abandoning her when she had his child. This so-called god of the romantic poem was himself nothing but a lowlife and a complete jerk around women. Why he's held in such high regard today is a mysterious as it is scandalous. He was present that dark and stormy night when the four (Byron, Shelley, his doctor John Polidori, and Mary) all agreed to write a ghost story. Mary and John were the only two who actually did, and neither one of them actually wrote a ghost story. Mary came up with Frankenstein, which was disturbingly autobiographical in many (metaphorical) ways and John wrote a vampire story which in turn inspired Bram Stoker's Dracula. Polidori killed himself only a few years later.

Mary's father, Godwin, had no idea how to show affection to a child, and Mary felt the loss of her mother and her father's icy demeanor throughout her life. Godwin, supposedly a free-thinker and an advocate of free love, ostracized Mary after her elopement, even as he hypocritically harangued Shelley for loans to pay off his own debts! He did not come around until Shelley's wife, Harriet, killed herself, and Mary and Shelley finally married against their own "principles". Shelley then hypocritically tried to gain control of the two children which he had until then quite effectively rejected!

Later in life, Godwin appallingly withheld Mary's novel Mathilda, from publication, refusing to submit it and refusing to return her own manuscript to her. It wasn't published until 150 years after her death! In short, this is the story of two women who were remarkable, each in her own way, but who fell afoul of bad men and ended-up on bad relationships, yet who seemed unable to stick to their principles and extricate themselves.

To be fair, society and the law were harshly stacked against women in those times, even more so than they are now. It’s remarkable that these two Marys achieved what they did, and in the long term, both did prove to be strong. After her two suicide bids, Mary Wollstonecraft came back to life, restoring her career, meeting and became involved with Godwin, and finally giving birth to Mary, but dying shortly afterwards - the fate of all too many women back then.

Mary, having lost her step-sister fanny, lost her first two children, and been sorely used by Shelley, wrote many novels, survived the death, tragedy and suicides around her, survived Shelley's sad death in a boating mishap, and lived to fairly ripe old age, becoming revered and an institution in her own lifetime.

This is a long, long book - almost six hundred pages (of which about ten percent is chapter notes) - packed with detail, anecdotes, and pictures. It’s remarkable history of the lives and times of two remarkable and very memorable women. I recommend it.

The Owl: Scarlet Serenade by Bob Woodward

Title: The Owl: Scarlet Serenade
Author: Bob Forward
Publisher: Brash Books
Rating: WARTY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!

I've head a good relationship with Brash Books. I like the idea of it and the people who work there, and I admire what they're trying to do, but personally I've had little success finding books from their roster which appeal to me. Maybe I'm just too picky! This one I thought would be a winner, but it wasn't, I'm sorry to say. It's book two in a dilogy.

This novel is about Alexander L'Hiboux, almost a super-hero figure, but without any super powers. His last name means 'the owl'. He's homeless not because of poor circumstances, but by choice - so his enemies never know where he'll be. He's an unlicensed private detective, and he suffers from insomnia - so he'll never be found sleeping on the job. Or at all. He is known as (and curiously refers to himself as ) The Owl. He operates outside the law with his own brand of justice, and no matter what he does, he never faces any consequences. In short, the story was rather juvenile, but full of adult themes. A curious combination.

There's no valid evidence supporting the author's assertion (via his first person PoV character narration) that the name of the Santa Ana winds ever came from the Mexican word for 'Satan' (which is actually Satanás) nor is there any supporting the more common claim that it's from a Native American phrase meaning 'devil winds'. It's more likely that they're named for the Santa Ana Canyon, although they don't blow solely there. It doesn't preclude a character being misinformed, however, and it does make for a fun legend.

Alexander has Native America in his genes and he apparently has a spirit guide, because when we first meet him, he sees what appears to be a native American who directs his attention to a car with three men inside, idling outside a nearby school. The guide then disappears. Why Alexander hadn't noticed this car without supernatural help goes unexplained. Why his guide hadn't warned him of this attempted kidnapping early enough that he could call the police goes likewise, but this gives Al a chance to perform his spectacular heroics.

He takes down the three guys one after another and then fires a shot from his Colt 45 peacemaker (seriously?!) into the car's gas tank and it explodes. Let's not get into the unlikelihood of this actually causing the tank to explode, and of his gun literally being able to knock someone three feet backwards into the air from its fire power. It's not going to happen. What intrigued me here was that the red-head he saved from the kidnapping, Sarah Scarlotti, chose to chase after him instead of waiting for the cops who were coming fast, judged by the sirens.

This precipitates a relationship between these two characters that presumably lasts the whole novel, haunted by violence and the very real feeling of being hunted. I can't say for sure because I had to quit half-way through. The writing wasn't at all to my taste. If you like simple stories full of improbable action and very little mood-setting or world-building prose, with lots of conversation to fill the pages and some unlikely close shaves, then you'll love this. It's just not my kind of story.

Four More Fantastic Bedtime Stories For Children by Scott Gordon

Title: Four More Fantastic Bedtime Stories For Children
Author: Scott Gordon
Publisher: Scott Gordon
Rating: WORTHY!

Today happens to be Scott Gordon day on my blog. I've favorably reviewed this author's children's books before. Apart from misdientifying a whale as a fish, and some issues of repetition, I liked the previous set of four, which was all about animals. I liked this one, too.

It's another four-pack, but these stories are a little bit more fantastical - well three of them are, anyway. The fourth one is about heart health, which I found commendable.

Two are about dinosaurs and were very well done (and accurate as far as my amateur eye could tell). Of course, we don't really know what color dinos were (with very few exceptions) and in a children's book it doesn't matter, so there were no issues there.

The pictures are excellent and very well drawn; they're very colorful and designed to be especially attractive to the target audience of children ages three to six.

The heart health is full of fact and advice about eating the right kind of diet to help your heart help you. I'm not sure how much of an impression that would make on a three-year old, but you know it's really never too early to start on a good diet. That doesn't mean zero treats and junk food: psychological health is just as important as physical, so we don't want to turn our kids into misfits and pariahs, but keeping an eye on what they eat works wonders as they mature. If your kids go off to college and ruin eighteen previous years of healthy eating, at least the foundation is solidly in place - that's all a parent can do!

What particularly amused me was the ninja robots. I was saddened that it was ninja robot repair men, rather than "ninja repair robots" (or something). It's entirely wrong to suggest that only men can repair things (or that robots have gender!). Men have been in charge of the world - more or less - for centuries and look at what they've done! There's no guarantee that women would have done any better, but if we never give them a chance, how will we ever know?

If it's never too early to start on good diet advice for children, then it's equally never too early to start on erasing gender barriers! Tell your kids that these are really repair women, but because they're ninjas they're disguised, of course! Or point out that they are men, but look at the trouble they cause!

That aside I'm willing to rate this (or more accurately these four) a worthy read.

My Crazy Pet Frog by Scott Gordon

Title: My Crazy Pet Frog
Author: Scott Gordon
Publisher: Scott Gordon
Rating: WORTHY!

Today is Scott Gordon day on my blog, and I have to tell you that the only thing crazier than the frog is Scot Gordon himself. This guy is a fellow blog-spotter, though I don't know him. I do know that he has has a wa-ay out of control imagination! I haven't always seen eye-to-eye with some of his text (he labels a whale as a fish in one of these books for example), but overall, I rate his work a very worthy read. He has a blog (link on my blog) where he talks about indie publishing.

His books are often on sale for free at Amazon, too, (as this one is as of the posting of this blog) so what's to lose? It's better to get a free ebook - even though you can't really hand it to your sticky-fingered kids and let them have at it - than to buy a print book with so much white space that it makes trees cringe! (The sample images in this blog are cropped so they don't look like they waste paper).

That pet peeve aside, this is worth taking the time to enjoy. I don't know how he illustrates these things but the images are remarkable and very appealing - perhaps because of their simplicity, clean lines and, yes, sometimes it's worth it, I admit! - the use of white space!

We start out right off the bat with the frog in the bath, but it can't last! Aye, there's the tub! The frog's gettin' frisky, yo, and soon it's disco - or is he a secret agent rantin' and ravin'? Maybe he's a hero and you start to cheer...Oh! no indeed, he just wants to read!

I liked this story. It's probably his best one yet. It left me with a frog in my throat anyway. I recommend getting off your lily-pad and trying this one!

The Great Zoo of China by Matthew Reilly

Title: The Great Zoo of China
Author: Matthew Reilly
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Rating: WARTY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!

Errata:
page 42: "CJCJ" should be simply "CJ"

"They have a top flying speed of one hundred and sixty miles an hour...-That's one hundred miles an hour for those of not used to the metric system…"
(page 53) - someone's getting miles and kilometers mixed up! Unless "metric miles" are shorter!
"A Chinese woman joined Hu on stage"? They're in China - why specify a 'Chinese' woman?!

The first thing I noticed about this novel was how many trees it was wasting! You can see form the sample page on my blog that only about 40% of the page is used for print - the rest is white space.

This is a chapter start page, so it leaves more white space than usual, and no one on in their right mind would try to suggest that every inch of the page be covered in minute text. Indeed, in ebooks, it's not even relevant, but if a book is going to run to a print version, then it's worth expending some thought - nboth by writers nad publishers in considering how many trees are going to die for this fiction to appear on a bookshelf in this era of catastrophic climate change. Every little helps.

That aside, let's look at the writing.

This novel, very much a redux of Jurassic Park (we even have male and female siblings, but in this case they're adults) is a somewhat different take on dragons. It’s set in contemporary times, and begins with a reptile expert, CJ Cameron, and some other people, including her brother, being sent on a visit to a zoo in China - a new zoo wrapped in secrecy. It turns out that the secrecy was because the zoo was set up solely for one type of animal: dragons!

An oddity about his novel is that it's replete with illustrations - not of the dragons, but of the facilities! There's even one illustration of a trace on a computer monitor! The illustrations were reasonably well done, but I'm not sure I got the point of them. It actually seemed rather insulting - that we readers wouldn’t be able to grasp what we were told, so here’s a pretty picture to help? Either that or the author wasn't sure of his ability to write adequate descriptive prose. It was just a little weird.

The worst thing for me however, was that the science was really poor. To begin with, the dragons are impossible even by fantasy standards. They come in three sizes, the smallest of which, we're told, weighs about a ton and the largest of which is the size of an airliner, yet despite these hefty sizes and weights, the dragons seem able to break the laws of physics and become airborne by means of inadequate and rather flimsy wings. The largest flying creatures of which we're aware were some species of the pterosaur order which have long been extinct. The biggest of these was only 150 pounds in weight (~68 kilos), and to get this human adult scale creature airborne, they required a wing-span approaching forty feet (~12 meters).

That's not even the most absurd part of it. These dragons are supposed to be related to dinosaurs, but they’re hexapods (the author got the prefix of the name right at least!): four legs plus two wings. The problem is that there's no precedent for hexapod vertebrates - let alone dinosaurs - on Earth, so the evolutionary history of these creatures is nonsensical at best. Your problem going into this then, is that you have to leave science at the door if you're going to have a hope of enjoying the story. That's not a nice thing to do to a reader, but it’s a requirement here.

We're told on page 87 that crocodiles are the only surviving members of the archosaur line (which includes dinosaurs and pterosaurs), but this is wrong. Even if we assume 'crocodiles' includes alligators, caimans, etc, this still excludes birds, which are also archosaurs. Despite the size of the pterosaurs, the largest creatures on earth have never been flying creatures, and herbivores tend to be large and grounded. What would be the point of their evolving an ability to fly when what they eat is on the ground and they're large enough to avoid being prey animals themselves? It made no sense. Ostriches, for example, are evolved from birds which could fly, but as soon as they grew large, they stopped flying.

The dragons' only "weakness" is saltwater, we're told, yet we’re offered no reason at all why a reptile would be scared of, or vulnerable to brine. It’s especially nonsensical given that we’re expressly told that one species loves water. Other than that, it seems that the dragons are larded-up with one super-duper trait after another to such an extent that the story becomes a pretty much a parody of itself. I fully expected one species to be named 'Mary Suasaurus'. These dragons don’t breath fire, but that's the only thing they don’t have. Had it been an Austin Powers story, they would undoubtedly have had lasers on their heads….

We’re told that they can see in pitch-darkness, which is completely ludicrous, tapetum lucidum or not. No being can see in pitch darkness if they're relying on an organ which processes light, since the definition of pitch-dark is that there's literally no light to process! If we’d been told that they can detect infra-red, or process sound, then that would be a different matter, but we’re specifically told that it's light.

Few people have truly experienced pitch-darkness because we’re such an energy-profligate world that there's always some stray light, spilling out from somewhere. Once, I was in a cave in Virginia and the guide had us hold onto the rail on the walkway as a reference point, and then she turned off all the lights. Now that's pitch darkness! You quite literally could not see your hand in front of your eye. The darkness felt almost like a substance you could actually grasp in your hands. It was downright creepy, and the reason for this is quite simply that we are not at all used to being without any light at all.

When CJ the "scientist" is told that dragons can see magically, she accepts this with a simple nod of her head. At that point I lost all faith in her credentials as a scientist! Neither does she have issues with the dragons having ampullae, which are the electrical organs which sharks, platypuses, and other aquatic creatures have, enabling them to detect living things by their electrical output. This only works in water, yet we’re expected to believe the dragons have them! Author Brad Thor is quoted on the cover describing this author as the king of hardcore action, and while that isn’t the same as science, it did make me seriously disinclined to read anything Brad Thor has written if he thinks this novel worth raving over.

It’s not just the science that's bad, unfortunately. Bad science with a good story might just be readable, but the story has dumb woven deeply into its fabric. One thing CJ does notice is that the dragons are being controlled by some kind of electronic pain-infliction device. We're later told that there's a chip grafted onto their brain which can send a signal directly to the pain center, so if a dragon tries to breach the electromagnetic dome within which they're confined, it gets hurt so badly that it will black out and plummet to the ground. This is supposed to teach them to stay within their confined area, but if you have an animal weighing upwards of a ton, and it blacks out while in flight and ends up plummeting to the ground, it’s not going to learn anything, because it will splat and that's the end of that! How come any of the dragons are still alive?

This is the kind of novel you end-up writing when you're so hell-bent on 'dramatic' that all it gets you is 'drama queen' (which is the ridiculous CJ saving the world single-handedly). Sometimes that can even work, but here it just makes me sad that something like this could get published, and the powers that be cynically expect it to sell because it's hitching a ride on the coat-tails of something much better that came before it.

Of course once you know that this is to be a cross between Jurassic Park and Jaws, you also know exactly what’s going to happen, so all of the mystery goes flying out of the window (as indeed do some of the characters). So what's left? Well the only things to look forward to would be original situations, really great characters, and humor, but none of that was evident in the part of this novel that I read (which was about one third of it).

The biggest problem once the creatures let loose is the same problem shared by all of this kind of predator story: why are the predators suddenly insatiably and perennially hungry, and why do they instantly think humans are prey and pursue them to a brain-dead extent when easier prey is readily available? It made no sense. Despite the animals being very well fed, they attack the humans for no reason and start to feed as though they've been starving for weeks. It makes especially little sense given that, as we’ve been inanely told, these dragons can 'hibernate' for a thousand years in their eggs! So at that point it pretty much fell apart completely for me.

The only thing which kept me reading - at least for a short while, was that we’ve also been told how intelligent these animals are, so I was curious to see if there was some other motive at play here other than the author's desire to simply write a gratuitously graphical blood and gore-fest of the quality of a B-grade slasher flick. It turned out to be the latter, because the writing made no more sense than such a picture does. For example, we’d been told earlier that the emperor dragons - the largest - are largely herbivorous, yet when the escaping group of humans encounters one, they're scared that it will eat them! Worse than this, it becomes very territorial yet it’s defending neither food nor mates!

I made it to page 117 and that was all I could stand to read. This novel was far too cartoonish to take seriously, and that's all there was to it.

Bitterwood by James Maxey

Title: Bitterwood
Author: James Maxey
Publisher: Quality Press (no website found)
Rating: WARTY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!

Bitterwood by James Maxey pub. Quality Press

Erratum:
"…an unjust law may be disobeyed in good conscious" should be "…an unjust law may be disobeyed in good conscience" (page 97)

Well this book is different! I'm not a big fan of dragon stories, but once in a while one comes along and entertains me. Neither am I a fan of series. Call me npc, but I prefer the new rather than the recycled old, so it was interesting to read a story about dragons that had a new approach. The problem was that this novel became really boring about two-thirds the way through, and I lost all interest in it.

There's a prologue in this novel which I skipped as I always do. I've never regretted not reading a prologue and if the author doesn't feel it’s important enough to go into chapter one (or beyond), I surely don’t feel it important enough to waste time in reading. That said, the opening chapter was a grabber. A hunter is sitting by his forest camp fire eating dragon tongue. The dead dragon is lodged in a tree above his head, brought down by his expertly placed arrow, but this dragon has a backpack… Okay, it’s satchel, but wouldn’t a backpack have been way cool? However, this is one of those traditional fantasies, where backpacks don’t exist, so satchel it is.

The satchel shows that this dragon is a sentient being - a scholar, even. The man burns the notebook the dragon had been keeping. He is old and gray, and is headed for a dragon ceremony which the hunter is evidently seeking to disrupt, a sun-dragon ceremony at which the first human to ever witness such an event and live to tell of it, is awaiting its start with anticipation.

Despite being human, Jandra has been raised since childhood by the dragons and fully empathizes with them if not all of them with her. Actually, it was one dragon, Vendevorex, a sky dragon (like the one in the tree), and the king's personal wizard, who raised her. Why dragons would have such institutions as the monarchy is not explained, and I found it most peculiar.

I'm not a fan of monarchies and privilege of birth, but I realize that they are part and parcel of this kind of fantasy. It would be nice, though, once in a while, to see writers step off the path most traveled and carve out some new routes; however, this author certainly takes a half-step, because story is rife with interesting perspectives on dragon-lore, and he doesn’t leave it solely at that.

This story could, in some ways, be described as modeling itself after Planet of the Apes, since there are three types of dragon. The sun dragons, like the chimpanzees, are the nobility. Their guards and soldiers are the earth dragons who fulfill the role of the gorillas. Finally there are the urang-utans, which are the sky-dragons, who are scholars and scientists.

The sun dragon ceremony, which was rudely interrupted, is how a new king is chosen. The king's first-born male offspring is banished from the dragon's presence, and forced to live by their own means until they reach a point where they feel they can challenge the king. If one of them can do so successfully, he becomes the new king. In this case, there are two contenders, but one of them - the more scholarly one - rejects the barbaric hunt of enslaved humans - a frivolous ceremony which precedes the main event. His brother goes after the human as tradition demands - and is slaughtered in the forest from a brutal rain of well-aimed arrows, all from the bow of the lone hunter. "Bitterwood" cries the king, and lets loose the dogs of war. But Bitterwood escapes by means of a sewer cover which lies in the middle of the highway!

Yes, if that grabbed you as it did me, you'll want to know more, but I'm not going to tell you because the rest of the novel conveniently pretends that never happened! I guess you have to go to volume two or three to find out, and I'm not playing that game! I will tell you that one thing I found really odd in Bitterwood was the prologues. I don’t do prologues. I routinely skip them and I never miss them. That ought to tell you plenty.

In this case, I skipped the one at the start, but when we reached part two of the book, there was another prologue! I'm like, "Wait, wasn't part one the prologue to part two? I don’t get this authorial OCD with prologues! If it’s important, then put it into chapter one or later! If you don’t consider it material that's worth including in the body of the novel, I don’t consider it’s material that's worth reading.

This turned out to be great - an original novel looking at the world from the dragon PoV where humans are mere subjects, and I was enjoying it until Jandra quit being a pet of Vendevorex's and became a pet of Petar (Peta?!) Gondwell, who promptly man-handled her and treated her very much like property - and not once did she object or even have qualms about it. So much for a strong female character!

At one point, being brave when others would run, Jandra gets her throat slit. Not her jugular, but her trachea, and there's a lot of blood. When Vendevorex tells her he's going to magically close the wound, she nods her head. WHAT? Her throat is slit deeply and she's nodding her head? I think this is a case of a writer not paying close attention to what it is they're writing!

Oh, and it's "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life" - not "Origins of Species" as it's rendered on page 207! But by that point I was skimming pages because the story got lost and was not in the least bit interesting to me. I can't recommend this and will not be following this series.

Dress Shop of Dreams by Menna van Praag

Title: The Dress Shop of Dreams
Author: Menna van Praag
Publisher:
Rating: WORTHY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!

The title to this novel was what drew me in. It's so frivolous! In this story, Etta Sparks owns a rather magical dress shop which seems almost to repel many customers for no obvious reason, but once in a while, the right customer comes in, and Etta knows she can help them find that missing piece of themselves. The dresses tell her so. Plus she has a magical thread!

After we've met Etta, we're introduced to her granddaughter Cora. Almost a polar opposite, Cora leads a very mundane, if regimented life, following her mathematical mind's dictates, working at the lab, visiting the book store, counting things to an OCD level, early to bed, early to rise. Today, however, is her birthday and she's having a meal with her grandmother followed by a special cherry pie baked with love by Walt, at the nearby book store cum pie shop. Walt seems completely lost around Cora, who in turn seems completely unaware of him as a member of the opposite sex.

Here's a precious quote: "Then Walt stops pacing. He has an idea. An idea so different, so startling and wild, it makes him sneeze with shock." LOL! I loved that. The problem is that Walt's idea has nothing to do with Cora - whose name isn't really Cora....

One thing which felt a bit pretentious to me was the inclusion of a book store. Writers tend to do this as a substitute for intellect. 'Oh, she works in a book store, she must be smart!' or 'Oh, he reads books, he must be a treasure!" Book stores are wonderful, and librarians are every bit the figures which Evelyn Carnahan declares them to be in The Mummy, but it's almost a cliché now to include a book store in this kind of novel.

That said, the novel turned out to be pleasantly surprising. It was very layered and rather complex, with one new item after another being offered for consideration as each chapter flew by. Each of the main characters has a background which is carefully exposed and explored. I liked it a lot and I recommend it.

The Adventures of Blue Ocean Bob - A Challenging Job by Brooks Olbrys

Title: The Adventures of Blue Ocean Bob - A Challenging Job
Author: Brooks Olbrys
Publisher: Children's Success Unlimited
Rating: WORTHY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!

This is a great little novel and picture book which tells - in poetry yet - of Ocean Bob's adventures on the sea front where he does his darnedest to keep the coast clear (of junk) and help ocean wildlife.

With his best friend Xena the hummingbird always ready to give advice, Bob proves he's a guy who's not afraid to ask for direction (and other forms of help) from his ocean of pals, including Mary Marine (his mentor), Al the dolphin, Doc the turtle, Earl the clam, and Wallace the walrus.

Bob's adventures include lending a helping hand, a pelican's plight, offering safe passage, heeding a simple reminder, and diving deep!

Beautifully drawn and colored, this book is aimed at 6 to 8 year-olds (hey, I'm an honorary eight-year-old! No, I am! That's my story and I'm sticking to it like a limpet to rock...), I was impressed by the warmth, heart, and art.

Doctor Who: Engines of War by George Mann

Title: Doctor Who: Engines of War
Author: George Mann
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Rating: WORTHY!

I was pleased to be able to get a copy of this novel because it covers the mysterious time of the so-called 'war doctor'. In severe withdrawal after the Xmas Doctor Who show, I needed a good fix, and this delivered. It's not the same as actually watching The Doctor on TV I don't think any novel ever could capture that, but it did the trick. In this novel, we hit the ground running. We don't begin with his regeneration, but at a much later point - several centuries later - when he looks more like he did in the fiftieth anniversary special, and not long before he unleashed The Moment.

I have to say at this point that a lot of time travel stories: novels, TV and movies - and including the Doctor Who series - often make no sense. The problem is the time travel. For any Doctor Who episode (or any movie or novel where they have control over their time-traveling), it's completely valid to ask the question: given that the main character typically arrives in the middle of this problem he or she has to solve, why does the character not simply go back in time to a point before the problem began, and nip it in the bud right there?

Obviously the short answer to that is that the show, movie, or novel would be completely boring in that event because there never would be any thrills and spills, but it's nonetheless a valid question. In the Doctor Who series, they limply try to explain this away with vague hand-waving at 'crossing your own time line' and so on, but whatever explanation(s) they've ever given are always over-written by The Doctor himself who crosses his own time line and changes things with impunity in scores of episodes.

In this very novel, the Doctor expresses regret at not having dealt with the Dalek problem when he'd had the chance (in his regeneration as the fourth Doctor), when he chickened out of wiping out the Daleks at their very genesis. His weak excuse was some clueless hand-waving at how communities - even planets - had been brought together because of the Dalek threat, but he never once talked himself out of it by hand-waving at the billions to whom the Daleks have brought suffering and slaughter. The problem here isn't that however, but the war doctor's regret! Why regret it? He has a time machine. He's in a warlike mood! Why not quit regretting it and go back and kill Davros, solving the problem? If he went back early enough, he wouldn't even be crossing his own time-line.

Of course, then there would be no more Daleks, and the BBC would be short of a big crowd-pleaser and revenue-puller. Aye, there's the rub! So in order to enjoy this you have to let that go. You also have to let go the question of why it's been some 400 years of non-stop war when both the Daleks and the Time Lords can travel through space and time.

This brings us to Moldox - a planet reminiscent of Earth in the old Doctor Who story from the second (original) season,and an episode titled The Dalek Invasion of Earth. Moldox is all but destroyed by the Daleks, and is on its last legs, with a few pitiful resistance fighters trying to fight back using purloined Dalek weapons. As one of them, Cinder, thinks she's about to die, The Doctor crash-lands the TARDIS, destroying the Daleks and mutants working with them, and saving Cinder.

The Doctor informs her that he has to go to the nearby city to find out what the Daleks are up to, and despite her extreme fear, she accompanies him. It turns out that mutating humans to create new Daleks isn't the only plan they have. They're also building a weapon which will destroy Gallifrey and eventually win the war. With this information, The Doctor travels to Gallifrey to reveal this news, and Cinder tags along with him.

On Gallifrey we discover that Rassilon has been resurrected to lead the Time Lords, and he has a few dark secrets of his own. One of these involves employing a weapon which is described as being able to collapse black holes. Seriously? Black holes are in a perennial state of collapse. It makes no sense to talk of deliberately collapsing one. Exploding one, on the other hand, would be spectacular if it were possible, but collapsing one? No. Bad science!

There were some other issues with this novel. There always are, especially in a case like this where the novel can realistically never be as good as the TV show because it doesn't have what makes the TV show worth watching every minute: the visuals, the TARDIS noises, the lively companions, the Doctor himself. Novels are simply not the same. That was expected, so this is about issues other than that. I mentioned the absurdity of the black hole collapsing "bomb", but there were other, relatively minor things, but nonetheless important.

For example, Daleks are supposed to have a hive mind, yet we're told they have identification marks on their casing, just under the eye-stalks. I don’t get that. What is its purpose? How would one Dalek not know to which other Dalek it was talking? Why would it even need to talk out loud? Indeed, since it is a hive mind, why would it make a shred of difference which Dalek the other one was? You could have Dalek 'A' working with Dalek 'B' all morning, and then Dalek 'C' replacing Dalek A for the afternoon and it didn’t ought to make an iota of difference to the work being done if they're all linked. No matter with which Dalek you interact, it ought to feel exactly like you're interacting with the same one every time.

At one point some Daleks are described as having guns. I assume this simply means their weapon sticks. It just seemed weird to refer to them as guns. While we're on the topic, there are several new varieties of Dalek introduced here (and some old stand-bys such as the special weapons Dalek from TV's Remembrance of the Daleks during the tenure of the Seventh Doctor. I found myself wondering why. If the Daleks are as fearsome and deadly as they are, then where is the impetus to improve them or create varieties?

A big deal was made on the show where the thirteenth Doctor (Matt Smith, as it turned out, since Tennant's Doctor aborted his first regeneration, and the war doctor was slipped in there between Gann's and McCoy's Doctors) visited Winston Churchill and was witness to the Dalek 'regeneration'. These were to be the new, scarier Daleks, and yet every single show since then, they've been completely absent! I never got the point of revamping them if they're never going to be seen again. But I digress!

The writer did do an excellent job of writing in general, however. He shows us exactly why The Doctor would not have qualms about time-locking both the Time Lords and the Daleks: The Doctor reaches a point where he sees no discernible difference between the two races. Having said that, of course, the time-lock seems to have failed dismally, since the Time-Lords were indeed tied up by it, but not, evidently, the Daleks - not in the least, given how often they've showed up in the rebooted TV series!

However, let's get back to the book, which I recommend for those having the same withdrawal symptoms as me. It wasn't brilliant, and as I've mentioned, had a few issues, but it was worth reading, and I enjoyed it. it was really nice to see a little bit of a largely unknown and intriguing Doctor. John Hurt's incarnation is the only one of which we never had a series, so this book was welcome. Although it;s technically not canon, it did fit into the canon nicely, and was enjoyable.

The problem was, it never cured my withdrawal. I need more! Much more! You know the TV shows used to be almost weekly, in episodic form. Now at least we get a complete show each week, but we get them for only a paltry few weeks of the year. Why? There are scores of good writers out there who would love to write these shows. I demand more! Let's make it at least a half-year's shows - or even one every other week so we can get them for the whole year! We need a revolution! Demand more Doctor Who NOW!

Insanity by Cameron Jace

Title: Insanity
Author: Cameron Jace
Publisher: Cameron Jace
Rating: WARTY!

This novel, which has an astounding 72 chapters (they're quite short), is an oddity in that it's credited on the cover to Cameron Jace, but is actually copyrighted to Akmal Eldin Farouk Ali Shebl. I know! Weird, huh? It's yet another YA novel rooted in fairy tales, but this one also seems to draw at least part if its inspiration from ABC's Once Upon a Time in Wonderland itself a spin-off from Once Upon a Time, a short-lived show featuring Alice as a young woman who spent a large part of her childhood in an institution for the reality-challenged. In that series, Alice is a strong-willed and self-possessed female character who can take care of herself, so naturally the old white men who run things are not going to let something like that flourish. But I digress.

This is also another YA novel told in first person PoV because you know it's not legal to tell YA stories any other person, don't you?! The limitation of this person becomes crystally clear when the author is periodically forced to switch to third person to relate events elsewhere in the hospital. Why this was schizophrenic person-switching was done is as much a mystery as it is irritating. Perhaps to try and convey a sense of insanity? It does achieve that rather spectacularly, but it;s irritating as hell, which is why I didn't finish this drivel.

This novel begins very much the same way as the TV show, with Alice Pleasance Wonder, patient number 1832 (which is the year in which Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was born), trying to break out of the institution, and failing as she becomes paralyzed by her fear of mirrors and by her Tiger Lily plant (which is her only companion) abruptly telling her that she's insane.

In that same institution, is held a patient known as Carter Pillar. Evidently some sort of homage to Hannibal Lecter, Carter is a serial killer, who escaped justice by pretending to be insane. Now he's evidently escaped this place, too - but he's done it before and he always returns.

This novel is replete with such sly references to Alice in Wonderland, but some bits and pieces made me wonder, such as, on page 17, "...cold-blooded serial killer disguising as an insane man." I would question the use of 'disguising' in place of disguised'. On that same page we encounter "...because neither the Interpol nor FBI..." which would have read better had it read, "...because neither Interpol nor the FBI...", and then there's "A series of uninterrupted laughter..." which makes no sense at all. This was an added irritant in an already irritating book.

Alice apparently killed all her classmates and her boyfriend on a school bus somehow, and blamed it upon creatures from Wonderland. Is she telling the truth or is she really insane? In the end, I didn't care. It's sad to see such a good idea (even if unoriginal) wasted so badly.

Love, Volume 1: The Tiger by Federico Bertolucci

Title: Love, Volume 1: The Tiger
Author: Federico Bertolucci and Frederic Brremaud
Publisher: Magnetic Press
Rating: WORTHY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!

I've often said that graphic novels need a story - otherwise they're just picture books, but in saying that, I don't necessarily mean that the story has to be in words. This is a classic example of one which has no words, but tells a very entertaining story in beautifully painted pictures.

Note that it's not a young children's book - hopefully the cover will convey that adequately! It's a day in the life of a tiger, after all; they're not known for their social work. Indeed, the tiger is not only the largest of the living big cats, but also the most dangerous to humans, having killed more of us than any other mammal.

They're no more friendly towards each other. In David Attenborough's remarkable TV documentary series, Life_Story, episode two ("Growing Up") features three adolescent tigers and disturbingly demonstrates how utterly brutal tigers can be. So, in short: beautiful, but deadly!

The novel is reminiscent, in some regards, of The Jungle Book and is evidently set in Asia, perhaps India, home to literally half the world's remaining four thousand or so threatened tigers. There's nowhere else that you can find the mix of creatures depicted here. There are no tigers in Africa - except perhaps for one mating pair which were released there some time ago according to a documentary I saw.

The one problem with this mix of critters though, was the piranha-infested river. There are no piranhas outside of South America (not in the wild anyway, thank goodness!), so I have no idea what the writers (artists?!) thought they were doing there. not that the piranhas actually did anything, save grin wickedly.

There is no over-arching plan here other than to show wildlife at its wildest, and some of the events are highly improbable, but not impossible, so I didn't let that bother me. Volume one focuses on the tiger. Volume 2, I understand, will follow the fox which we see briefly in the tiger's story.

The tiger stalks a tapir, encounters snakes, crocodiles, panthers, and others, and it eventually gets to, er, man-up and eat. I admit that I had to wonder why - if it was so hungry - it didn't eat at an earlier point when it had a perfect opportunity. I didn't think tigers were that picky!

Overall, very entertaining, very well done, and well worth "reading". I look forward to the next volume.

Dark Engine, Volume 1: The Art of Destruction by Ryan Burton

Title: Dark Engine, Volume 1: The Art of Destruction
Author: Ryan Burton
Publisher: Image Comics
Rating: WARTY!

Illustrated by John Bivens.

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!

Baritone voice-over, sounding like molten chocolate: "In a world which has fallen to ruin, where the very air itself is choked with the ashes of the dead, and monsters roam at will, arises Sym, born of alchemy and sent back in time to destroy the very roots of this world's downfall."

Sounds great, huh? It wasn't. I couldn't get into this. The artwork was fine, if on the grotesque side of beautiful, but the story simply wasn't there. it offered nothing to interest me much less to draw me in. Paradoxically, given the premise, there really was nothing new here. We got Mona the Barbarian, but what did that bring us in turn, really?

The worst part for me though, is that I have to really question this idea of creating a female weapon. Why female? Why does a weapon need even a gender? It just struck me as exploitative, and nothing more than a cynical gimmick: one which is neither complimentary to, nor empowering of, the female gender.

I didn't read all of this, so perhaps there were some saving graces towards the end, but that would have been too little, too late for me even had I been able to generate the interest required to read this "story".

I have to mention, in passing, one other issue I encountered, and this was with the iPad Air rather than with this novel per se since I encountered it in more than one graphic novel. The iPad Air uses Bluefire Reader for books I get from Netgalley, and the iPad I have is new and reasonably powerful, but it encounters frequent problems with turning pages in graphic novels - it takes several seconds sometimes, for it to "register" that a page is "there", so if you try to swipe the page (turn the page) or tap the screen to change pages, it can take a few seconds before it notices that you're trying to turn the page!

Or worse, it half turns the page so you get this:

A half page!

This necessitates sliding the page that extra bit, which in and of itself isn't an issue, but when this happens repeatedly, I have to say it's a major annoyance. I expect better than this from Apple Corporation, and I'm not gettign it. I've been rather disappointed in my experience with Apple products - both the Macbook Air and the iPad Air have delivered noticeably less than I'd been led to expect. Just saying!